UKTV | PENSON

Where in London can you find the head of a 49-foot long dead parrot, a knight in shining armour and tables that can pass through walls? No, its not inside your child’s nightmares, it’s at the brand new West London development 10 Hammersmith Grove, where PENSON have just finished designing a new 32,500 square foot office space for television giants UKTV. Set across two floors the space is dominated and defined by its statement staircase; designed by PENSON and installed and manufactured by Aldworth, James & Bond. The fluid sweeping steps taper out to a large platform, dotted with seating pads and with a great view of the trend watching video wall. The platform itself was designed to act as a multipurpose feature, perfect in equal measure for settling down for an informal chat or for standing up to present to a team. PENSON focused a lot of time and energy on getting the shape and flow of the staircase just right: it acts as the heart of the building and it was vital for us to get the balance of originality and functionality just right to ensure that it would be able to connect the two floors perfectly, making the two halves of the space a whole. UKTV like change. They don’t like to fall into the same old habits or get too comfortable, so we opted to have no designated seating and a communal storage area rather than personal pedestals that restricted employees to staying in one place and avoiding mixing with their colleagues, friends and strangers. To support this atmosphere of free working and collaboration, we included a huge variety of workspace types: small tables with cozy seating, Hotcakes, long benches, comfy snugs, swing seats suspended from the ceiling, zig zag sofas and patio seating, this space has it all. We wanted to make sure that if they didn’t want to, the staff of UKTV would never have to work from the same seat twice. If you pass through the large communal seating area – complete with pool table and Dave leather armchairs – you’ll step out onto the terrace: a suntrap that we’ve filled with stylish flower boxes, bright blue patio furniture, and bench tables that match those inside – it’s almost as if they’ve passed straight through the glass wall. Back inside you’ll find the family kitchen, complete with fancy coffee machine that the team needed private lessons from a barista in order to use and state of the art oven for cake baking: with PENSON the oven gloves get equal importance to video conferencing on iPhones. If this is all sounding a little busy for you, do not fear, if you find yourself getting a little overwhelmed by the pace of the communal areas you can escape into one of the meeting rooms (just check the digital booking tablet outside the door to see if they’re free). Simple and clean with just a few elements bringing character, the rooms provide a relaxing alternative to the hustle and bustle of the main floor. However, we wanted to make sure they still felt personal, so we got the UKTV team to name them: you won’t find “The Room With The Big Pink Sofa” or “The Room Over There” in many other office buildings, that’s for sure. UKTV told us that they wanted the space to be noisy and open: they wanted to embrace the energy and the stimulation that comes with working in an innovative office with a lot of fun people, and we definitely think that whether it was through the round desks designed for collaborating or the fact that socializing was placed at the core of our design, we delivered. It’s not all lively and frantic, however, and some peace is brought into the space by the tube lighting and the floorboards, which run in linear lines. This adds a clean layer to the space and serves as a barrier between the hectic open ceiling and the even more hectic open office. The most important part of this design for us was to make sure that UKTV were provided with a space as unique and inherently social as they are. Everything from the flooring finish to the round desks is completely bespoke, and luckily we inherited a lot of stuff (such as giant parrot heads and suits of armour) from the client to add even more character and to connect a story to the space. A classy 80’s theme created using both new and vintage furniture tied everything together and, before we knew it, it was all over. Creating a space this impressive on a shrewd budget – using recycled materials and reused furniture – may seem like an impossible task to most, but once again PENSON have proved that all you need is the right ideas, the right attitude and the right giant dead bird to make great designs on a not-so-great budget.